The First Visual Go-to-Ground Set Up?

Scott K. (aka Gangsters Jack Russell Terriers) dropped me a note to say he thought he "might have built the first artificial open sided earth working tunnel back in the JRTNNC hay days of the early 2000's."

Best of all he has the pictures to prove it! As Scott notes, "These pics are from the final [tunnel set up] I built on a double axle boat trailer so I wouldn't have to start from scratch every year."

He notes that "it was purely a spectators sport with each dog getting a ceramic plaque for entering. The plaques had numbers stamped in the back, and then a drawing at the end of the day was done for a terrier lamp I had made. It was $10 to have your dog 'play,' and in the 5 years we ran the tunnel system at the trials we never took in less than $1,000 with it. It was purely a fun event and a money maker for the club. Although I made no claim to having any rights to the idea, many folks from other clubs contacted me to ask permission to build such a system themselves. Of course I had no objections, and many more of these 'tunnels' were built over the years by various JRT clubs for their trials."

Scott says that in the beginning he built the systems on site the day before the trial, and that one tunnel was constructed entirely of hay bales as the fair grounds had them stacked up. Over time, however, Scott began collecting hollow stumps and logs at the ranch and he eventually incorporated them into a spiraling tunnel system mounted on a 30-foot boat trailer which he could leave assembled and then take to the trials; a kind of carnival setup.

Scott notes that "old dogs, Bull Terriers, young dogs, scared dogs, they all went in as their owners reveled in watching them. I had a couple of trap doors for 'extraction' along the way because some dogs would 'lock-up' and stall the system," and that the fired porcelain 'tickets' were new for each trial and that folks got to where they were collecting them and came back to enter trial after trial."

Now what Scott fails to mention is that be made all those porcelain tickets himself, and the lamps too. Scott is truely an artist with clay (to say nothing of what he can do with a welding rig), and in a subsequent email it came out that has had also taxidermied the fox from a salt-cured skin and an excelsior form. The boy has talent in spades!

I mentioned to Scott that variations on the American go-to-ground terrier trials were now being seen all over the world -- Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, France, Canada, Finland.

They had not cropped up in the U.K. however, because of the strange laws in that country that prevent a dog from even barking at a caged rat at the end of a pipe. It might scare the rat! Perish the thought!

It seemed to me that if a Go-to-Ground trial could be set up that used taxidermy as "quarry," even the animal rights lunatics in the U.K. would be hard pressed to oppose it. Did he think an above-ground Go-to-Ground setup like the one he had put together in California might raise a little cash, Cain and consciousness for the fight against the Ban in the U.K., and/or to support the work of the Fell and Moorland Working Terrier Club? His thoughts?

Scott wrote: "The problem in the U.K is that they can't even pick up a road kill badger. They could use a fox head though. The U.K. judges that came over to our trials were all quite impressed with the system from the stand point of watching all the different terriers reacting to the quarry. It was pretty entertaining and many times a bad [taxidermy] handler would get the mounted fox head too close to the bars and the taxidermy piece would lose a nose or worse. Some heads I bought off EBay, as they normally didn't make it through more than two trials. I know this, the animal-head-on-a-stick definitely fires-up a terrier, and a real working terrier will get just as hot for it as a parlor dog."

Scott went on to say that "If you notice in the pics there is a 2" tube that comes through the 'stop end' where the taxidermy head is located, and this was to 'growl' at the terrier if the dog was a little tentative. I got to where I could growl good enough to run some dogs clear back out of the tunnel system."

And knowing Scott not only could he, but he did!

So there it is, a little history (best to write it down before it gets too old, eh?), a little credit, and perhaps a new idea for those looking to bring in a little money and interest into a terrier club or rescue fund, whether that is here in the U.S. or overseas.
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